[GPlates-discuss] plotting plate convergence / divergence

[Christian.Heine at shell.com]

Christoph,

I guess one way I'd go about this would be to use GPlates's velocity colatitudes/colongitudes - see attached colongitude output from the kinematics tool for a scenario between India and a fixed Madagascar. So the recipe would be to fix one plate and simply extract the colat/colong velocities of the one you're interested in to derive a net convergence/divergence.

This would pretty much follow Cox & Hart's "Plate tectonics: how it works" and use simple vector calc (or Fowler's "Solid Earth p13ff). There've been a few papers where this has been looked at - have a look at Maloney et al looking at the dynamics of subduction along the Sth American margin (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tect.20067/full). 

Graphically visualising this in GPlates would be a bit more tricky I suppose, but would have to think about this.

Hope this helps, 
Christian
 
> I was wondering if in addition to plotting relative motion paths, it
> would be possible to plot relative convergence & divergence of two
> selected plates. I imagine sth where convergence is positive, and
> divergence is negative, as opposed to the always positive motion paths.
> Unfortunately I did not find it in the tutorials. Any idea is greatly
> appreciated. Thanks,
> 
> Christoph
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Dr. Christoph von HAGKE
> Assistant Professor
> 
> Institute of Structural Geology, Tectonics and Geomechanics RWTH Aachen
> University, Lochnerstraße 4-20, 52056 Aachen, Germany
> 
> Ph.: +49 241 80 98443


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  Christian Heine, Ph.D.
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